Health Care Foundation Nepal (HECAF)

Health Care Foundation – Nepal (HECAF) is a non-profit organisation offering health facilities with a focus on kidney diseases. In 1997, HECAFestablished the National Kidney Centre in Kathmandu. The Centre is the largest haemodialysis treatment facility in Nepal, with capacity to treat 30 patients per day. In Nagarkot, HECAF initiated a Health Centre with support from the local community. The Foundation delivers theoretical and practical training to medical staff, as well as undertaking health promotion activities at community level.

National Kidney Center

The National Kidney Center (NKC), one of the largest dialysis centers of Nepal, was established in 1997 by the Health Care Foundation-Nepal on non-profit basis.
Health Care Foundation-Nepal (HECAF-Nepal) was established in 1994. It is a NON profit and NON governmental organization working in health, environment and disaster medicine. The HECAF is fully dedicated to providing health care services that broadly targets common people of both rural and urban areas.

National Kidney Center has been working in kidney care services since its inception. Delivery of easy health service to the kidney patients after the establishment of the Center was one of the major objectives of our targeted programs. NKC has been launching various health-related programs with well-equipped facility/updated infrastructure and service to provide easy health service and facilities to common people.
NKC has been providing wide range of health services including haemodialysis (hospital based, mobile and home dialysis), outpatient care, pathology and emergency medical response program. Furthermore, it provides health education program, supports staff for patients’ care including disaster preventive and awareness programs. It is the only center in Nepal that provides dialysis service to the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and C infected Kidney patients. NKC has also been supporting poor and marginalized people with easy medical treatments by coordinating with the government.
It is endeavouring to make health service more accessible by organizing kidney campaign, which was first launched on the occasion of World Kidney Day in 2010. Sharing ideas and experiences in national and international forum, trying to equip with latest medical technology and data management software are the other efforts of the Center. It has also become a recipient of the ISO 9001:2008 Certificate.
Initially, NKC was set up with the help of Mrs. Beate Vogt, Honorary Advisor of HECAF-Nepal. Without her contribution in collecting, coordinating and dispatching the dialysis machines and other major equipments for the smooth running of the Center is impossible. She personally supported technicians to come to Nepal to teach the technique of Dialysis machine maintenance.

The NKC is the largest haemodialysis treatment center in Nepal and has better facilities comparatively. It has a capacity to provide haemodialysis service up to 130 patients per day. The Center has performed thousands of haemodialysis sessions from 1997 to 2011.
It is the only hospital that provides mobile and home dialysis services in Nepal. It is providing free dialysis service and health services to poor and marginalized people, HIV/Hepatitis B infected patients and senior citizens aged over 75 with financial support from the government.
The Center is a not for profit-based clinical service center. Basically, its revenues are derived exclusively from patient fees; however it treats all patients regardless of their ability to pay. As the Center is service-oriented institution, it provides the free of cost service and partial assistance to the acute patients with poor financial status. On average, around 10 percent of its service is free of cost. At present, 40 haemodialysis machines are under operation. In total, 32,743 dialysis sessions were performed in fiscal year 2010/11.
The NKC is the only Center in Nepal with an isolation unit for highly contagious patients of hepatitis B, C and HIV. Eight dialysis machines are exclusively reserved for treatment in isolation room. A total of 4,574 positive dialysis sessions were performed during the fiscal year 2010/11. Similarly, the Center conducted 326 mobile and 51 emergency dialysis sessions in the last fiscal year.
Team of National Kidney Center (NKC)
Mrs.Beate Vogt, Goslar,Germany-Honorary Advisor
Mr.Krishna Pd.Achary,President,HECAF-Nepal
Er.Santosh Gyawali, General Secretary,HECAF-Nepal
Dr.Rishi Kumar Kafle,MD,FASN, Executive Director-NKC
Mr.Bisnhu Subedi, Administrative Director-NKC
Mrs.Prabha Sharma,Nursing Director-NKC
Er.Manohar Sherchan, Project Director,Construction of NKC building program

Projects of HECAF

Health Care Foundation-Nepal (HECAF-Nepal), established in 1997, is a not-for profit organization fully dedicated to providing health care services to common people of both rural and urban areas. HECAF was established in 1994 by several visionaries who felt an urgent need to establish a social service organization for providing accessible and affordable healthcare services to the people of Nepal.

OBJECTVES

The main objectives of HECAF-Nepal are as follows:

To provide preventive and curative health services to the common people in easy, accessible and appropriate manner.

To play an active role in providing institutional support and to facilitate potential contributions in this sector through close contacts and co-ordination with governmental, non-governmental and international bodies involved in the related field.

To deal with various issues that are directly or indirectly related to the health of common people such as environmental pollution, solid waste disposal, lack of pure drinking water, misuse of medicines and other harmful activities. The organization intends to provide possible institutional support by launching public awareness campaigns and conducting or promoting subject specific studies and research in the field.

To provide basic health care to the common people by organizing health camps, mobile hospitals, blood donation camps etc.

To provide institutional support to the people affected by natural disasters, epidemics and accidents as far as possible.

To operate ambulance service equipped with on-the-spot emergency treatment facilities.

To provide simple accessible and appropriate health care by establishing a well- equipped and well-managed health centre in accordance with the need of the times.